La Lampe Gras – The Original Architect Lamp

In 1921, a young engineer named Bernard-Albin Gras designed a series of lamps for use in offices and industrial environments. The Lampe Gras, as it came to be known, is the quintessential French architect lamp. Astounding in its simple yet beautiful design, which had neither screws nor welded joints in the basic form, it quickly gained a cult following in France.

The harbinger of an era, Lampes Gras were one of, if not the, first items created for industrial use to became desirable in interior decorating. The 1920s were a golden age of design in France, and the Lampe Gras epitomized the combination of form and function that has come to define the style of that period.

Championing the lamps as modern classics, Le Corbusier described them as a “type-objet”; an object reduced to its pure function. He used the lamps in his own offices, as well as in many of his most famous architectural projects all over the world.

Production of the Gras Lamps stopped at the outbreak of the Second World War, and only now, finally, after over a year of experimentation and careful study, Lampes Gras are once again being made by hand in France.

Jaime Derringer, Founder + Executive Editor of Design Milk, is a Jersey girl living the laid back life in SoCal. She dreams about architectural jewelry + having enough free time to enjoy some of her favorite things—running, reading, and drawing.